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Saturn V Preservation Efforts
PizzaFace writes "Saturn V: The rocket that took man to the moon remains a totem of its time and a magnificent memento of youthful superpower. Yet Slashdot reported a year ago on the neglect suffered by the Saturn V rockets that were not launched into space. Some progress is being made toward preserving these awesome vehicles. The Kennedy Space Center has already brought its Saturn in from the rain; Houston and Huntsville are putting shelters up this year and working on funding for restoration and more permanent indoor exhibits. These gigantic masterpieces of 20th century engineering deserve a visit - maybe a pilgrimage."
What strikes most people who stand next to it is how *big* it is. Yes it is big on the scale of a human. Maybe I'm weird, but what struck me was how *small* it is. It can go to the Moon and come back, yet it's smaller than a freight train.
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I was at Kennedy Space Center 2 weeks ago. Truly the saturn V is a marvel of modern engineering. The tour guide gave lots of information that I already knew, yet the people that were with me said, "Wow, this is really cool! How come they don't teach any of this stuff in school? How come we aren't still using this stuff?" I tried to explain how we have been sidetracked for 25 years by the space shuttle and how, hopefully, we will be using something similar, yet even greater, than this wonderful Saturn V again in the future. Most of the tour at KSC is overrated, but the drive around the vehicle assembly building, the tour of the saturn V rocket, and the "rocket garden" full of old gemini and mercury redstone rockets make the high price of admission worth it.
As one of the many thousand people who work at Johnson Space Center, I have watched them enclose our Saturn V over the past few months. All of us are quite appalled.
Where I once came to work next to a giant reminder of NASA's past accomplishments (or rather, left for lunch by it, as I usually come in via the back gate), now I only see a big, white, ugly building. Where once tourists could stand back in awe as they took in the rocket's size, now they have to peer through windows at it.
A permanent building housing our Saturn V will surely protect it better from the elements... but it wrecks the whole reason for having it there in the first place.
A better preservation program would have three steps:
1. Commit the money needed to re-paint it once every 10 years.
2. Inspect it once a year for structural problems; repair those as they arise.
3. Do something worth doing and go someplace worth going, so that our most impressive accomplishment is not a 30 year old rocket.
For all those people who are thinking or posted, "what's the big deal?" or "The rocket is just a big tube with chemical propellent." Think again. I used to be one of these people.
Since I have children, pilgrimages to the Orlando area once every couple of years has become requisite because of a certain multi-national entertainment conglomerate that happens to be very good at marketing to children. On a recent trip, I insisted that we all go to the Kennedy Space Center for a visit while we were there. Everybody was not too enthusastic about losing an entire day at the theme parks to drive an hour and a half to the coast just to see a "bigger airport".
Once we got there, it was amazing how people's opinions changed, but the biggest hit of the day was the multimedia presentation and tour of the indoor Saturn V rocket. I was skeptical myself as to how entertaining this portion of the visit would be, but it was by-far the best part of the KSC tour. The way they have this thing mounted allows you to walk under the rocket. Also, at each of the separation joints, they separated the components so you can see the machinery and technology that made the rocket work. It was like walking into the garage where they keep one of the baddest vehicles know to man and someone opens the hood for your inspection.
I highly recommend the bus tour of the Kennedy Space Center if you are remotely close to it. It is one of the best ways to gain insight of how those things actually flew. (Not to mention all the other cool things you'll see like the Shuttle Launch Facillity and the ISS Fabrication Facillity.) As far as preservation of the other Saturn Vs, if they are trying to build something similar to what is in KSC, then I'm all for it.
"Ahhhh, best laid plans of mice and men... and Cookie Monster." -- Cookie Monster, Sesame Street
That's just because NASA failed to order the correct equipment for the mission. These Saturn Vs are the standard spaceflight edition made out of flimsy aluminum sheets.
For archival applications, they really should have ordered the special National Monument Edition Saturn V model. These are constructed entirely out of inch-thick solid bronze, and are designed to withstand centuries of exposure to the elements.
Modern? It's a scaled up V2.
Yeah, and a fax machine is just a waffle iron with a phone attached. The V2 was a single-chambered, single stage rocket fueled by alcohol and LOX, with a mechanical guidance system that was essentially just sophisticated clockwork and gyros adjusting tiny fins in the exhaust stream. The Saturn V was multi staged, multi engined, fueled by kerosene and LOX in stage one and two, and hydrogen and LOX after that. It was computer guided by gimballing the engines themselves on movable mounts. Other than the obvious similarity in that they're both rockets and that the project leader for both was Wehrner von Braun, they are completely different animals.
If a job's not worth doing, it's not worth doing right.